[Vulcan]

Originally Posted by Bindair Dundat

Agreed.
I have spent most of my cognitive years studying Nazi Germany- and to draw any parallels between the two beggars belief. Hitler has been analyzed to death by a myriad of very good authors in the last twenty years and he was a product of a VERY select socioeconomic tenor, the likes of which will never (EVER) be seen again. Hitler=Stalin? I will buy into this one- they were contemporaries of each other; each doing their "own" thing in real time, during the period.
Authoritative?
Read Alan Bullock: "Parallel Lives", Richard Overy: "The Dictators", Ian Kershaw: "Hitler" (2 volumes), Richard Evans: Third Reich trilogy (three volumes), Read Adam Tooze: "The Wages of Destruction" which describes the economic picture in Germany during the Nazi ascension to power.. and follows it to the end.
To draw parallels between Hitler, Germany and ANY contemporary figure/nation is seriously stretching the bounds of credibility.
People that toss up such inflammatory statements without doing any homework on the matter should STFU.
Putin won't go any further than he has because he will get squashed like a bug. And he knows it. He is way more informed than Hitler ever was...
You can't compare a despot from the current era of instantaneous communication to one where the teletype was a brand new thing, TV was nascent, and even the telephone was reserved for those that "needed" one...
I grew up with a rotary dial telephone...

Say no more.

There may be instantaneous communication but Putin doesn't understand the new world.

George W. Bush on Putin's domestic centralization of power: "He thinks he'll be around forever. He asked me why I didn't change the Constitution so I could run again."

Read more: http://www.businessinsider.com/tensi...#ixzz3WHWUAr91

ormer President George W. Bush on Thursday said Russian President Vladmir Putin had “changed” and blamed Russia’s oil wealth for encouraging his confrontational attitude against the West.“I think he changed,” said Bush in an interview on CNN’s “The Lead with Jake Tapper,” when asked if he misjudged Putin early on. “Of course, a president should open the door and give people a chance, except for the despicable tyrants.”
Bush early in his first term said that he had looked into Putin’s eyes and found a man he could trust.The former president Thursday said that when he was in office he believed Putin had wanted to work with the West, but after the price of oil went up, his attitude shifted.
“I think it changed his attitude,” he said. “And I think it emboldened him to follow in his game that pretty much zero-sum, you know, I win and you lose and vice versa.”

http://thehill.com/blogs/blog-briefi...-putin-changed